Question

Crowd Funding What does one do to obtain funding for a new invention, movie, or company? Do you go to the bank? Do you go to venture capitalists? Do you go to angel investors? Crowd Funding is an alternative to these traditional sources of funding. Kickstarter.com is one of the largest of these crowdfunding websites. Here a person posts about the project with a description, maybe a video, and the funding needed. Backers then pledge money to the project. If the funding goal is not reached, then the project is stopped with return of any pending obligations of support. Kickstarter started in 2009, and since that time has been focused on helping creative types find funding sources. Since 2009 it has received almost 2 billion dollars in pledges from 10 billion backers for over 260,000 projects such as films, music, stage shows, comics, journalism, video games, technology, and food-related projects. So this is a great opportunity for aspiring new artists, inventors, etc., to obtain funding. This is happening on Kickstarter with 1000’s of dollars pledged each day, where the creator of the projects keeps 100 percent ownership of the project in which investors decide they want to invest. Go to Kickstarter.com and look at the various project categories. Select a category and a project of interest to you. Provide a description for one of your selected projects, including the offerings and number of backers. Discuss the pledges, the amounts of the pledges, and the numbers of people for different pledge amounts. What does the pledge amount tell you about the motivation of the customers? Explain why crowdfunding may be advantageous to new entrepreneurs. How does Kickstarter seek to build a community for the entrepreneurs? What information must an entrepreneur provide to get funding? How does Kickstarter manage the collection and transfer of pledges? Would you use this site yourself or recommend it to others?

Answer 1

Pledges: Amount $3,717,452,354 dollars has been pledged to kickstarter projects. This is an amazing fact.

Other amazing fact about the kickstarter community is that 32% are the repeat backers i.e. they have already backed a project before backing a different project. Total Backers 14,742,442.

Total Pledges: Over $ 46 Million.

The figures that I have stated above tells me that kickstarter community is made of Innovators backed by early adoptors. Innovators are those who list their project for funding whereas backers are early adopters who not only show faith in their idea by contributing but also by spreading the word to the world. This doesn't help in only giving project a life but also paves the way for success of the project. The customers, early majority faces less difficulty in accpeting such projects as this has been already validated by Kickstarter community.

I myself have tried raising funds for a modern agriculture farm but I couldn't as I come from a good family. I couldn't get over the fact when my friends started making fun that why you need money. Can't your family afford it or can't you loan. Why you need donations ?

Still, I realized there are certain advantages of using crowd funding platforms for new enterpreneurs;

1) When we have a new idea, we need certain validation to to go ahead as we have always in mind that if a certain thing would be successfull or not. When validated by such community motivation reaches to extreme new level.

2) Money is also very important factor, many beautiful things won't have become reality if crowdfunding won't have existed.

3) Backers act as researchers, when a project is put on live to raise funds backers before pledging do a research or a market analysis with their limited means. It is though little but another important aspect.

Kickstarter build a community by providing a cross platform for innvators to raise funds but also making possible for experts or innovators in different feild to contact or support each other.

Following infromation is to be provided:

1) Name

2) Address

3) Bank Account Details

4) Social Security Details

5) Linkedin/Facebook details: Not mandatory but helps in building trust

6) Project Information

8) Purpose for which funds would be used.

9) Additonal Details, photos and videos.

After reviewing the project details, our project is put online to collect the funds. As escrow account is created in which all the funds are kept till the target is acheived and the project deadline is over. If the target is not acheived money is return to the ones who pledged.

Also, escrow account can be defined as an account created for special purpose.

I have used it once and I would use it again and have already been recommending others.